University of Michigan alumni

Morton Landers Curtis (November 11, 1921 – February 4, 1989) was an American mathematician, an expert on group theory and the W. L. Moody, Jr. Professor of Mathematics at Rice University.Born in Texas, Curtis earned a bachelor's degree in 1948 from Texas A&I University, and received his Ph.D. in 1951 from the University of Michigan under the supervision of Raymond Louis Wilder. Subsequently, he taught mathematics at Florida State University before moving to Rice. At Rice, he was the Ph.D. advisor of well-known mathematician John Morgan.Curtis is, with James J. Andrews, the namesake of the Andrews–Curtis conjecture concerning Nielsen transformations of balanced group presentations. Andrews and Curtis formulated the conjecture in a 1965 paper; it remains open. Together with Gustav A. Hedlund and Roger Lyndon, he proved the Curtis–Hedlund–Lyndon theorem characterizing cellular automata as being defined by continuous equivariant functions on a shift space.Curtis was the author of two books, Matrix Groups (Springer-Verlag, 1979), and Abstract Linear Algebra (Springer-Verlag, 1990).

Alleen Pace Nilsen is an American literary scholar, linguist, and one of the pioneers of both humor studies and children's literature studies. She is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at Arizona State University, where she was previously the director of the English Education Program.
Together with her husband Don Nilsen, she co-founded the International Society for Humor Studies.

Philip Louis Cantelon (born 1940) is the co-founder and CEO of History Associates Incorporated and a leading pioneer in the field of applied history. He previously taught contemporary American history at Williams College, and is a founding member of the National Council on Public History and the Society for History in the Federal Government. Cantelon is an expert on oral history, foundations, business and institutional history, as well as the history of deregulation.

Philip Hershkovitz (12 October 1909 – 15 February 1997) was an American mammalogist. Born in Pittsburgh, he attended the Universities of Pittsburgh and Michigan and lived in South America collecting mammals. In 1947, he was appointed a curator at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and he continued to work there until his death. He published much on the mammals of the Neotropics, particularly primates and rodents, and described almost 70 new species and subspecies of mammals. About a dozen species have been named after him.

Nancy Hays Teeters (July 29, 1930 – November 17, 2014) was an American economist and corporate executive who served as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1978 to 1984. A member of the Democratic Party, Teeters was the first woman to sit on the Board. She was nominated by President Jimmy Carter to fill out the remainder of the term of Arthur F. Burns, a former chairman of the Fed. Teeters was known for her public statements in which she dissented from the mainstream opinion of the Board and Chairman Paul Volcker.

Alan Freese Wilt (May 14, 1937 – May 7, 2005) was professor emeritus of history at Iowa State University.

Sherman Anthony Minton Jr. (24 February 1919 – 15 June 1999) was an American physician, herpetologist and toxinologist, who conducted the earliest detailed modern studies of amphibians and reptiles in Pakistan. Born in New Albany, Indiana, he was the son of United States Senator and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Sherman Minton.
As a child in the 1930s, Sherman Junior was already collecting reptiles near his home and learning their scientific names. He wanted to study herpetology, but his father insisted on law or medicine, and he chose medicine, enrolling at Indiana University Bloomington and obtaining his B.S. degree in 1939. Sherman then transferred to Indiana University Medical School and received his M.D. in 1942.
He met Madge Alice Shortridge Rutherford (20 March 1920 – 2004) at Bloomington in November 1937, when she introduced herself with the remark "I understand you collect snakes." They became friends but did not marry until October 1943 because of World War II.

Sherman Anthony Minton Jr. (24 February 1919 – 15 June 1999) was an American physician, herpetologist and toxinologist, who conducted the earliest detailed modern studies of amphibians and reptiles in Pakistan. Born in New Albany, Indiana, he was the son of United States Senator and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Sherman Minton.
As a child in the 1930s, Sherman Junior was already collecting reptiles near his home and learning their scientific names. He wanted to study herpetology, but his father insisted on law or medicine, and he chose medicine, enrolling at Indiana University Bloomington and obtaining his B.S. degree in 1939. Sherman then transferred to Indiana University Medical School and received his M.D. in 1942.
He met Madge Alice Shortridge Rutherford (20 March 1920 – 2004) at Bloomington in November 1937, when she introduced herself with the remark "I understand you collect snakes." They became friends but did not marry until October 1943 because of World War II.

Douglass Stott Parker, Sr. (May 27, 1927 – February 8, 2011) was an American classicist, academic, and translator.

Emma Lou Thornbrough (January 24, 1913 – December 19, 1994) was a pioneer among professional historians in African-American history, a lifelong civil-rights activist in Indiana, a professor of history at Butler University from 1946 until her retirement in 1983, and an Indiana historian and author. She was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. Thornbrough's major scholarly contributions include several publications devoted to black history, such as The Negro in Indiana before 1900; Booker T. Washington; T. Thomas Fortune, Militant Journalist; Since Emancipation: A Short History of Indiana Negroes, 1863–1963; and Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century (published posthumously in 2000). She also wrote Indiana in the Civil War Era, 1850–1880, among other scholarly publications. In addition to her writing and research, Thornbrough was well known as a social activist and was especially active in Indianapolis civil rights groups, including the Indianapolis Human Relations Council, which she helped organize; the Indiana Civil Liberties Union; and the Indianapolis National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.